Time off for dependants: contacting your employer

Businesses will welcome an EAT decision on the right to time off for dependants which highlights the need for employees to ensure that they make contact with their employer to tell them why they are absent as soon as reasonably practicable for them to do so.

The employee in this case had been taking his heavily pregnant partner to hospital, at first due to illness and then because she had been admitted to give birth. However, he had failed to tell his employer the reason for his absence as soon as it was reasonably practicable to do so.